Photo Album: Photo Series 1996-2001 Bk.1

When I first saw the portraits by Dutch photographer Ruud van Empel in their real size at Leica Gallery Prague, I recollected the time when I was little and my mother dressed me in my nicest dress and took me to the photographer from time to time. Wearing beautiful dresses and looking directly at the camera, many of the children in Empel's portraits give the impression of such "official" photographs taken for a family album. The only exception is that the children are not standing in a photo studio surrounded by the same borrowed toys, but they are in a forest, surrounded by nature, holding a flower or maybe a squirrel in their hands. At a second look, however, you can feel there's something strange about the photos, although you do not know what. After a more thorough examination, you will notice some small details, like that their faces are unnaturally smooth and that one of the little girls does not have eyebrows at all… What a trained eye may also find disturbing in some of the children is the unnatural reflections of studio flashes in their eyes, which makes the kids seem as if they had been crying.